Barbara Corcoran shares her best career advice for 20-somethings

Barbara Corcoran was only 24 years old when she left her waitress
job in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to sell real estate across the river
in Manhattan.

She had no background in real estate, but her hotshot new
boyfriend told her she'd be a natural marketer and had to give it
a shot. Their relationship and business partnership would not
survive, but Corcoran took her half of the company they founded,
The Corcoran Group, and turned it into one of Manhattan's
premiere agencies before selling it for $66 million in 2001.

Later, she became a television personality and has been one of
the "Shark Tank" startup investors for the past seven years.

A viewer asked her for advice for weighing graduate education
against jumping into one's career.

"I weigh it simply, in a practical sense," Corcoran said. If you
want to be a lawyer, get a law degree; if you aspire to a
high-level position on Wall Street, get an MBA. The important
thing is to consider how that student loan debt is going to
affect your life once you graduate, and if that burden is truly
necessary, she explained.

"I think the important thing is to ask yourself, 'What's going to
make me happy?'" she said. It's difficult to find that answer
when you're young and so you have to approach it "the
same way we find out what clothing looks good on us: Try a lot
on."

This embracing of risk is how in her early 20s Corcoran realized
that even though she had bachelor's in education, her natural
ability to connect with people and her eye for design meant she
was perfectly suited for the real estate industry. In your 20s,
she explained, you need to be willing to experiment with your
career.

"You just have to try on a number of jobs to see what gets you
excited, and that's where you want to go," she said. "And more
often than not, you're not going to find that in a classroom."